Abstract [en]

Previous studies have shown that the average of guesses made by a group of people, on a question based on general knowledge, often is better than the single guess alone. This has been shown possible to apply on a single individual by producing multiple guesses. One study shows that individuals with low working memory spans benefit more from this phenomenon than individuals with a higher memory span.

The aim of our study is to investigate whether these theories can be applied on a group of adults with an intellectual disability. In this study there were 34 participants, 17 subjects in a trial group and 17 subjects in a gender- and chronological age matched control group. A guessing test with questions based on world facts was used. We also conducted tests to investigate mental age, language comprehension and two different domains of working memory.

The results show that both our trial group and control group benefits from taking the average of their guesses, although we have seen that this kind of test is difficult to apply on a group with intellectual disability. During the test situation individuals in the trial prove a certain understanding of the numerals, but the given guess does not always reflect this understanding. Also, their guesses are scattered, both within - and across individuals.